Rosie Boycott | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/profile/rosieboycott
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Food is a drug, and we have to learn to say no | Rosie Boycotthttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/18/food-is-a-drug-and-we-have-to-learn-to-say-no
Our entire relationship with food has to change if we are to tackle the obesity crisis. It's time to go back to school<br /><br />• <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jun/23/truth-about-obesity-10-shocking-things-need-to-know" title="">10 shocking things you need to know about obesity</a><p>Food is one of the most crucial issues of our time. In America, <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver" title="">13 people die every hour from food-related illnesses</a>, but we have no real solution to the obesity problem – the issues are myriad, and too ingrained in all corners of our life and our profit-loving world for any one idea to work. And politicians like simple ideas. So while there should indeed be a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/18/doctors-soft-drinks-tax-obesity" title="">tax on sweetened fizzy drinks</a>, that won't solve the problem on its own. We need a full-scale culture shift, something no government can achieve.</p><p>The facts are chilling: one in seven hospital patients in the UK are diabetic; 3.8 million of us have diabetes; one in three is overweight; one in four is clinically obese; and 37% of 11-year-old children are overweight or obese. We are one of the most unhealthy countries in the world. Even moderate obesity will reduce life expectancy <a href="http://www.noo.org.uk/uploads/doc/vid_7199_Obesity_and_life_expectancy.pdf" title="">by an average of three years</a>. And living with diet-related diseases means heart trouble, cancers, strokes, liver failure, wobbly knees, bad skin and amputation of limbs. It means hospitals spending fortunes to enlarge beds, operating tables, doorways and wheelchairs. Food-related illnesses now kill more people a year than smoking does, and disable an unknown number.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/18/food-is-a-drug-and-we-have-to-learn-to-say-no">Continue reading...</a>ObesitySocietyFood & drinkLife and styleFood & drink industryBusinessHealthUK newsSchoolsEducationFri, 18 Jul 2014 05:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/18/food-is-a-drug-and-we-have-to-learn-to-say-noPhotograph: Jupiterimages/Brand X/Corbis'I have been addicted to smoking, drinking and briefly to drugs, and can recognise the same ‘hit’ from sugary, salty foods.' Photograph: Jupiterimages/Brand X/CorbisPhotograph: Jupiterimages/Brand X/Corbis'I have been addicted to smoking, drinking and briefly to drugs, and can recognise the same ‘hit’ from sugary, salty foods.' Photograph: Jupiterimages/Brand X/CorbisRosie Boycott2014-07-18T05:01:00ZOn Liberty: Edward Snowden and top writers on what freedom means to themhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/21/on-liberty-edward-snowden-freedom
As the campaining group turns 80, Shami Chakrabarti, Ian McEwan, Tom Stoppard, Julian Barnes and others reflect on liberty<p>Writers have always been a big part of Liberty. Since our very beginnings, as the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) in 1934, they've played a key role in our battle to protect civil liberties and promote human rights in&nbsp;Britain. HG Wells, Vera Brittain, EM&nbsp;Forster, AA Milne, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley are just a few of the&nbsp;authors who supported Liberty in the early years – and perhaps it's not surprising that those who write feel a special affinity with Liberty's values and ideals. Now on Monday we will celebrate 80 years of&nbsp;"the fight that is never done".</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/21/on-liberty-edward-snowden-freedom">Continue reading...</a>SocietyWorld newsEdward SnowdenBooksPoliticsFreedom of speechFri, 21 Feb 2014 14:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/21/on-liberty-edward-snowden-freedomPhotograph: Murdo Macleod/Rex/Felix Clay/GettyEdward Snowden, Shami Chakrabarti and Julian Barnes. Below: Esther Freud, Ian McEwan and Tom Stoppard. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/Rex/Felix Clay/GettyPhotograph: Murdo Macleod/Rex/Felix Clay/GettyEdward Snowden, Shami Chakrabarti and Julian Barnes. Below: Esther Freud, Ian McEwan and Tom Stoppard. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/Rex/Felix Clay/GettyEdward Snowden, Shami Chakrabarti, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Blake Morrison, Rosie Boycott, Tom Stoppard and others2014-02-21T14:01:00ZThe Feminist Times is just as necessary as Spare Ribhttps://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2013/oct/08/the-feminist-times-necessary-spare-rib
All power to a brave new feminist magazine – we need as many outspoken and angry voices as possible<p>It's good to welcome a new feminist magazine to the world, whatever its name and however it is delivered – online, off-line or by carrier pigeon. In&nbsp;the 40 years that have elapsed since&nbsp;Spare Rib hit the newsstands, the world has changed dramatically for&nbsp;women, some of it good, some not&nbsp;so. But in recent years, there has&nbsp;been a worrying complacency where there should still be anger and&nbsp;great concern.</p><p>It seems to me that all the big advances of feminism (and remember, I am setting this against the 70s rules, which stated that women couldn't get a mortgage unless countersigned by a father or a&nbsp;husband, couldn't even rent a TV or&nbsp;a&nbsp;car unless a man was involved) have been for women at the top of society marching up through the professions, gaining autonomy and independence, emerging from the&nbsp;shadows of domesticity and taking their place in the cultural landscape of our country. We are continually breaking yet more "glass ceilings" with&nbsp;the likes of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Furse" title="">Clara Furse</a> in the London Stock Exchange and (with apologies) Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2013/oct/08/the-feminist-times-necessary-spare-rib">Continue reading...</a>MagazinesWomenLife and styleNewspapers & magazinesMediaFeminismSpare RibTue, 08 Oct 2013 07:00:07 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2013/oct/08/the-feminist-times-necessary-spare-ribPhotograph: Stuart Clarke / Rex FeaturesThe way we were … a front page of Spare Rib. Photograph: Stuart Clarke/RexPhotograph: Stuart Clarke / Rex FeaturesThe way we were … a front page of Spare Rib. Photograph: Stuart Clarke/RexRosie Boycott2013-10-08T07:00:07ZIs pasty eating a sign that you're an 'ordinary' person?https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/mar/31/pasty-eating-ordinary-david-cameron
As David Cameron asserts his love of pasties, Observer books editor William Skidelsky and journalist and chair of the London Food Board Rosie Boycott debate whether such claims help politicians<p>It's very hard to say exactly how "ordinary" a penchant for pasties makes you, since to establish this for certain would require some fairly detailed research into the socio-economic background of pasty-buyers up and down the country. In the absence of such information, however, I don't think it's too outlandish to suggest that the people most affected by George Osborne's new tax on hot food sold by bakeries and supermarkets will be those lower down the income scale. On the whole, buyers of hot sausage rolls, pies and supermarket rotisserie chickens tend to be those without a huge amount of money to spare.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/mar/31/pasty-eating-ordinary-david-cameron">Continue reading...</a>David CameronFast foodPoliticsFood & drinkLife and styleSat, 31 Mar 2012 17:00:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/mar/31/pasty-eating-ordinary-david-cameronPhotograph: GettyThe humble Cornish pasty – latest unexpected barometer of social class in Britain.Photograph: GettyThe humble Cornish pasty – latest unexpected barometer of social class in Britain.William Skidelsky and Rosie Boycott2012-03-31T17:00:01ZThe 10 best female pioneershttps://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2012/mar/04/ten-best-female-pioneers
An array of trailblazing women, from suffragettes to style icons <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2012/mar/04/ten-best-female-pioneers">Continue reading...</a>WomenWomen in politicsPoliticsLife and styleSun, 04 Mar 2012 00:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2012/mar/04/ten-best-female-pioneersPhotograph: Graeme RobertsonWanjira Maathai, feminist environmentalist from Kenya.
Photograph: Graeme RobertsonPhotograph: Graeme RobertsonWanjira Maathai, feminist environmentalist from Kenya.
Photograph: Graeme RobertsonRosie Boycott2012-03-04T00:01:00ZThe crucial role cities can play in protecting the honeybee | Rosie Boycotthttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/dec/16/crucial-role-cities-honey-bee
Planting bee-friendly flowers in small spaces can help bees make their vital contribution to the UK's ecological health<p>Among the images that Sunday supplements start publishing to sum up 2010, I suspect there will be one missing. One that, for me, sums up a year of continued and frightening environmental degradation and the looming prospect of severe food shortages in years to come. It is the image of workers in the Maoxian county of Sichuan, China, an area that has lost its pollinators through the indiscriminate use of pesticides and the over-harvesting of its honey. These workers aren't picking fruit, or digging, or planting. They're pollinating pear and apple trees by hand. In this part of China, the honeybee has been replaced by the human bee.</p><p>I learned about this startling practice this year, but in fact its been going on for the past two decades. Every spring, thousands of villagers climb through fruit trees hand-pollinating blossoms by dipping "pollination sticks" (brushes made of chicken feathers and cigarette filters) into plastic bottles of pollen and then touching them against each of the tree's billions of blossoms.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/dec/16/crucial-role-cities-honey-bee">Continue reading...</a>BeesWildlifeInsectsEnvironmentConservationEndangered speciesAnimalsThu, 16 Dec 2010 16:44:40 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/dec/16/crucial-role-cities-honey-beePhotograph: Li junsheng /ImaginechinaOwing to the lack of bees, Chinese farmer have started to pollinate their orchards by hand. Photograph: Li junsheng /ImaginechinaPhotograph: Li junsheng /ImaginechinaOwing to the lack of bees, Chinese farmer have started to pollinate their orchards by hand. Photograph: Li junsheng /ImaginechinaRosie Boycott2010-12-16T16:44:40ZCan a Christmas pudding ever be worth £250?https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/05/heston-blumenthal-christmas-pudding-ebay
As Heston Blumenthal's £13.99 Waitrose Christmas puddings sell for as much as £250 on eBay, Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner and journalist and campaigner for healthy food Rosie Boycott debate the rights and wrongs<p>In the old days, the only way to make money out of a Christmas pudding was by getting lucky and almost choking on the foil-wrapped sixpence that your mother had secreted there. Today, much to my delight, it appears you can just put the whole damn thing on eBay and wait for the bids to pile up. Or, at least you can if it's one of Heston Blumenthal's special numbers for Waitrose, with a whole orange hidden inside. Yours at the supermarket for £13.99 if you can get one, which you can't, because they're sold out. Hence eBay and a price tag of £250.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/05/heston-blumenthal-christmas-pudding-ebay">Continue reading...</a>Heston BlumenthalChefsFood & drinkChristmasLife and styleSun, 05 Dec 2010 00:05:47 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/05/heston-blumenthal-christmas-pudding-ebayPhotograph: Clive BoothHeston Blumenthal's £13.99 Waitrose Christmas puddings have been fetching as much as £250 on eBay. Photograph: Mary WadsworthPhotograph: Clive BoothHeston Blumenthal's £13.99 Waitrose Christmas puddings have been fetching as much as £250 on eBay. Photograph: Mary WadsworthJay Rayner and Rosie Boycott2010-12-05T00:05:47ZPeople in hospital suffer enough, so why are we feeding them bad food? | Rosie Boycotthttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/nov/07/bad-food-feeding-hospital-boycott
For too long people in hospital have been fed bad food. This week MPs have the chance to change that<p>Several years ago, my friend Annie Maw was thrown from her horse, Lily, and was paralysed from the waist down. She spent the next nine months in the Duke of Cornwall spinal unit in Salisbury. Her medical care, she says, was faultless but she had two complaints. The TVs were positioned in such a way that you could hear everyone else's and the food was disgusting.</p><p>"If I hadn't had people bringing me in food, I think I would have starved. The few vegetables we did have were overcooked – yellowing sprouts and greens. Tomatoes were those tasteless ones you get all year round. Lettuce was limp. There was never any dressing. I remember one night getting a strange black lump on a plate – nothing else at all: it was an overcooked fishcake. That was the pits."</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/nov/07/bad-food-feeding-hospital-boycott">Continue reading...</a>NHSFoodCaroline SpelmanZac GoldsmithCompassHealthEnvironmentPoliticsSun, 07 Nov 2010 00:02:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/nov/07/bad-food-feeding-hospital-boycottRosie Boycott2010-11-07T00:02:01ZFrom ashes to radishes | Rosie Boycotthttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/20/hope-from-the-ashes
We now see we can't rely on food imports. Luckily, my garden shows we can do tasty, fresher veg here<p>I spent the weekend in the country and found myself wondering what would happen were the travel ban to continue for, say, a month. Our garden would look after us – there are still leeks, celeriac, spinach and cabbages in the ground, salads growing in the polytunnel, last autumn's apples (admittedly a bit wrinkled) in store, as well as garlic, potatoes, onions and shallots from last year.</p><p>The early new potatoes are only a week or two away from being ready to eat. I have chutney, pickled onions, and sundried tomatoes in oil in jars in the store cupboard, plus marmalade, raspberry, strawberry and blackcurrant jam. The nettles are coming up and they make fantastic soup. The herb bed is growing fast, which means delicious sorrel omelettes, with eggs from our own chickens. It's not complete self-sufficiency, but it's a satisfying start.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/20/hope-from-the-ashes">Continue reading...</a>Iceland volcano 2010 (Eyjafjallajökull)World newsAir transportIcelandTransport policyTransportPoliticsUK newsEnvironmentNatural disasters and extreme weatherFoodFood & drink industryBusinessFarmingFood & drinkLife and styleEuropeTue, 20 Apr 2010 21:00:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/20/hope-from-the-ashesRosie Boycott2010-04-20T21:00:00ZFeminism in the 21st century | Rosie Boycott and Zoe Margolishttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/07/feminism-rosie-boycott-zoe-margolis
Our debaters: Rosie Boycott, journalist and co-founder of Spare Rib, and Zoe Margolis, author of blog and books detailing her sex life<p>Forty years ago saw Britain's first national conference on women's issues and the start of the modern feminist movement. Many women feel that we haven't come very far in the intervening years and that there is still much need for a campaigning feminist movement today; that equality still doesn't exist, that sexism is still rife. Natasha Walter's recent book,<em> Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism</em>, suggested that modern feminism is in crisis, while a three-part BBC4 series<i> </i><em>Women</em>, which starts tomorrow, charts the rise of feminism and examines its impact on contemporary women's lives. So has life actually got worse for women since 1970? And do we now need a feminist movement more than ever?</p><p><strong>Rosie Boycott </strong>This is a very testing time to be a feminist. Things really haven't worked out how we imagined when we started <em>Spare Rib</em> in the 70s. One of the great failures has been the inability of the government and women to address childcare sufficiently when other countries such as Denmark have solved that problem. Then there's the lookism issue. Now there's pressure on women of every age to be perfect, even girls as young as 11. The rise of lads' mags is also terrifying; women these days are actually sending in images of themselves topless.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/07/feminism-rosie-boycott-zoe-margolis">Continue reading...</a>FeminismSun, 07 Mar 2010 00:05:32 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/07/feminism-rosie-boycott-zoe-margolisPhotograph: Clive Dixon/Rex/Clive Dixon / Rex Features1971: women march through snowy London to demand liberation. Photograph: Clive Dixon/RexPhotograph: Clive Dixon/Rex/Clive Dixon / Rex Features1971: women march through snowy London to demand liberation. Photograph: Clive Dixon/RexRosie Boycott and Zoe Margolis2010-03-07T00:05:32ZMy week: Rosie Boycotthttps://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2009/may/10/my-week-rosie-boycott
<p>Early on Tuesday morning and I'm on the roof of the Hilton Hotel in London's Trafalgar Square, opening a herb garden which has been built by Jekka McVicar, Britain's unrivalled queen of herbs. Jekka has planted a wide variety of herbs, including the burn jelly plant from South Africa that oozes a thick gel and is, according to Jekka, incredibly effective. There's a bar on the roof and small kitchen, too, and she thought it would be handy for chefs who get scalded. </p><p>This new garden has been designated as site number 83 in our Capital Growth project which was launched by Boris Johnson and me last November; its aim is to create 2,012 growing spaces in London by 2012. It's not a wholly original idea – Vancouver is planning 2,010 such sites to ­celebrate the Winter Olympics, but we've been stunned by the response and so far have gardens and growing spaces springing up on rooftops, on derelict bits of land, along canal banks, in young offenders' institutions, doctors' surgeries, schools and in parks. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2009/may/10/my-week-rosie-boycott">Continue reading...</a>NewspapersMediaBiographyBooksSat, 09 May 2009 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2009/may/10/my-week-rosie-boycottRosie Boycott2009-05-09T23:01:00ZRosie Boycott: A lack of food security is London's achilles heelhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/oct/01/food
The capital imports 80% of its food and is vulnerable to shortages. But with political will, it has the potential to feed itself<p>Rocked by the <a href=" http://www.theguardian.com/business/marketturmoil">credit meltdown</a>, London's financial heart isn't its only weak point. The capital is acutely vulnerable in terms of its food supplies. During the last fuel crisis, Sainsbury's chief executive, Justin King, warned the then prime minster, Tony Blair, that the country could run out of food in a mere three days if oil supplies continued to be interrupted. Yet, despite these warnings, and the now widely-accepted inevitable decline of cheap oil, the government has never taken the issue of the food security of London, or the UK, seriously. And nowhere in the UK is more vulnerable than our capital, which imports approximately 80% of its food.<br> <br>Food in general travels much further today than ever before – between 1978 and 1999 "food miles" increased by 50% and now some 40% of all freight is related to food. Some 29% of the vegetables and 89% of the fruit we eat, for example, are imported. And in spite of organic food's environmental benefits at the point of production, over half of that consumed in the UK is currently imported (although this is declining as UK production capacity increases). According to the pressure group, <a href="http://www.sustainweb.org/">Sustain</a>, one basket of imported organic produce could release as much CO2 as an average four-bedroom household does through cooking meals for eight months. The same would, of course, hold true for an identical basket of non-organic produce (and without the environmental benefits offered by organic production). <br> <br>Some 95% of all the food consumed across the world involves oil at some point in its production – through the use of mechanised production, fertilisers, transportation and packaging. As global oil supplies diminish, so the threat to our overall food security increases. The globalisation of food chains make us vulnerable both to sudden interruptions in the supply chain, as well the spread of diseases such as bird flu. Both would be addressed by relocalising the growing of food, which would not only benefit health, but also strengthen communities which have lost touch with the very stuff of life – the food we need every day.<br> <br>How far could London go towards producing its own food? Assuming a catchment area of some 100 miles, the answer is a great deal. No one, at this moment, exactly knows how much, but the proposed creation of new <a href="http://www.lda.gov.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.1343">food hubs</a>, coupled with a determined effort to grow vegetables and food in London's already extensive (and largely unused) green spaces will hopefully see a dramatic alteration of the city's food security, an alteration which would also bring the cityscape to life.</p><p>Our vulnerability to the threat of a serious food crisis cannot be ignored. For too many years we have left the means of supply and delivery of our most basic human needs entirely in the hands of free-market forces. This has proved disastrous to the health of the nation, it has added to rising concentrations of CO2 that threaten to trigger runaway climate change, and it has left us wide open to serious food shortages. Since the second world war, we have grubbed up 80% of our orchards, and it is now estimated that there are more people in prison than there are farmers left who could bail us out. Thus, not only do we need to re-skill people as gardeners, we also need to examine how we use the spaces in our cities to ensure that we have a chance of freeing ourselves from our current dependency on multinationals who have only their shareholders' interests at heart – not the most basic needs of a nation, and of a planet.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/oct/01/food">Continue reading...</a>UK newsEnvironmentFoodWed, 01 Oct 2008 08:02:40 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/oct/01/foodRosie Boycott2008-10-01T08:02:40ZThe shocking realityhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/may/25/shockingreality
<strong>Hay festival 2008:</strong> Naomi Klein's thesis on economic opportunism rings all too true. No wonder so many want to opt out<p><a href="http://commentisfree.theguardian.com/category/the_shock_doctrine/">The Shock Doctrine</a> is a book I've long admired, and what came across on sharing a stage with Naomi Klein for the first time was what a stunning researcher and writer she is: an immensely impressive speaker with an incredible command of facts.</p><p>Klein's Shock Doctrine thesis is a model that fits pretty much any world situation: that moments of extreme change, be they man made or natural disaster, are being used to drive through otherwise unpalatable economic or social reform. You can see it here in the UK, in the way that the 7/7 attack softened people up to take the harder hit, such as the erosion of civil liberties. We would not previously have thought of giving up to the point where 42 days internment could be proposed.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/may/25/shockingreality">Continue reading...</a>Hay festivalGuardian Hay festival 2008Naomi KleinSun, 25 May 2008 19:00:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/may/25/shockingrealityRosie Boycott2008-05-25T19:00:00ZRosie Boycott: The war to end all warshttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/may/20/climatechange.carbonemissions
The climate change threat needs drastic action. Only a cross-party approach can deliver it<p>How do you define a war? There is the disastrous one that Britain is waging in Iraq, involving tanks and guns and the lives of our young men and women. There is the kind the government claims it is waging variously against poverty, terror, and obesity. But the greatest threat to us all, global warming - a threat far greater than any airborne disease or foreign dictator - has yet to be elevated to war status. Day by day, before our eyes, the planet is deteriorating: ice caps are melting, weather systems shifting, and the poorest are finding themselves facing life-threatening water shortages. Our wildlife is suffering, species are being lost before our children even have a chance to witness them in all their beauty.</p><p>Britain, with 174 other countries, signed up to the Kyoto protocol, but while the government has made great political play of the fact that greenhouse gas emissions have decreased over the past decade, actual CO2 emissions have gone up. The only cuts that have been made have come from small, one-off technical fixes of things like landfill gas methane emissions. Labour might have great plans for cutting climate-changing gases, but most of its policies, from motorway widening to new runways, point in the opposite direction, and are actually worsening the situation.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/may/20/climatechange.carbonemissions">Continue reading...</a>Climate changeGreenhouse gas emissionsGreen politicsTransport policyEnvironmentPoliticsHouse of CommonsTue, 20 May 2008 11:16:49 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/may/20/climatechange.carbonemissionsRosie Boycott2008-05-20T11:16:49ZDriven by the sunhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/may/15/solarpower.ethicalliving
A wheelchair that can travel across fields and over hills sounds unlikely. But that's what Annie Maw can do in her solar-powered Tramper. Rosie Boycott goes for a spin<p>Seven years ago this winter, Annie Maw's horse bucked while she was galloping across a field with the Mendip Farmers' Hunt, of which she had once been joint-master. She sailed over its head, landed heavily in the mud, and broke her back. Although she was never to walk or ride again, the accident turned this vivacious 60-year-old into an ardent environmental campaigner.</p><p>From her wheelchair in her new Somerset home - all the rooms on the ground floor lead into each other through wide doors, across even floors without a step in sight - she talks of the risks to the countryside from intensive farming, and the problems we all face as the planet warms. Maw's own contribution to the problem has led her to search for an alternative method of generating electricity, in particular, for wheelchairs.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/may/15/solarpower.ethicalliving">Continue reading...</a>Solar powerEthical and green livingRenewable energyEnvironmentDisabilitySocietyWed, 14 May 2008 23:44:39 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/may/15/solarpower.ethicallivingRosie Boycott2008-05-14T23:44:39ZRosie Boycott: Only a radical change of diet can halt looming food criseshttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/mar/28/food.ethicalliving
Costs are high now, but rising oil prices will bring enormous problems for a world with appetites that it simply can't sustain<p>This time last year it cost me about £7.50 a month to feed a pig on my small farm in Somerset; today it's nearer £15. In a year, wheat prices have doubled, leading not only to increased bread prices, but also to demonstrations by pig farmers, who are going out of business as fast as you can fry bacon.</p><p>Almost all the food we eat - 95% - is oil-dependent, so as oil prices rise, the cost of food does too. Oil is central to fertilisers, mechanised production, transportation and packaging. However, between 1950 - when mechanisation and fertilisers transformed farming into agribusiness - and 1984, world grain production increased by 250%. The consequent cheapness of food kept inflation down and allowed for the postwar consumer boom. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/mar/28/food.ethicalliving">Continue reading...</a>FoodEthical and green livingOilEnvironmentBusinessOilFri, 28 Mar 2008 00:03:09 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/mar/28/food.ethicallivingRosie Boycott2008-03-28T00:03:09ZRosie Boycott: The world is still organised to meet the wishes of menhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/feb/28/gender
As a shocking survey of careers after motherhood shows, real equality in our deeply sexist culture remains a pipe dream<p>Thirty-six years ago, as the winter of 1971 turned into spring, Marsha Rowe and I were putting together the first issue of Spare Rib. Our tiny office in Soho hummed with excitement and ideas and, above all, hope. Hope that finally women would move out of the shadows and into a world in which we would have equal rights in education and the workplace. Then, although it is hard now to believe it, a woman couldn't even get a mortgage unless her husband or father signed on the dotted line as guarantor. </p><p>Over the next decade, the lives of women in Britain were transformed. Girls and young women started out-performing men across the educational spectrum. We had rights to abortion and, legally at least, to equal pay. Once almost impossible career choices - such as law, the armed forces and high-level politics - opened up. The 1969 Divorce Act had meant that women could leave a marriage, confident that they wouldn't be forced leave their children behind. The establishment of the Equal Opportunities Commission made it illegal to sack a woman for being pregnant and introduced statutory maternity pay.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/feb/28/gender">Continue reading...</a>GenderUK newsInequalityChildrenSocietyThu, 28 Feb 2008 09:35:37 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/feb/28/genderRosie Boycott2008-02-28T09:35:37ZRosie Boycott: If we want green homes, we need to reward the ownershttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/nov/07/comment.comment
A new development of carbon-free homes and a model neighbourhood is the kind of scheme worth the government's money<p>The development is in Langport on the Somerset Levels, once blessed by two railway stations - axed because the future lay with the car. This short-sighted view is sadly illustrated by modern Langport, where the sheer weight of traffic on the main street makes walking a nightmare. A Tesco store and trucks add to the congestion and danger as well as undermining small businesses which should sustain the high street.</p><p>The new development by the Ecos Trust, a West Country eco-developer, lies along the banks of the river Parrett, where four flats and eight houses stand around a communal garden. The adjacent warehouse has been converted into offices, a cafe and a cinema-cum-meeting room, and last Friday it opened its doors for the first time, completing a vision all too rare in Britain today.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/nov/07/comment.comment">Continue reading...</a>EnvironmentClimate changeHousingCarbon footprintsCommunitiesGreen buildingGreenhouse gas emissionsWed, 07 Nov 2007 00:18:24 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/nov/07/comment.commentRosie Boycott2007-11-07T00:18:24ZWhy a woman's place is in the kitchenhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/26/gender.lifeandhealth
Back in the 1970s, when she launched the feminist magazine Spare Rib, Rosie Boycott was adamant that women should not waste their time cooking. Now she wonders if she went a bit too far ...<p>Thirty-five years ago, however, you could buy little in the ready meals line other than Vesta Curries, a dried concoction sold in an exotic-looking box which, every so often, my mother would dish up for dinner. I remember always being delighted by Vesta suppers, particularly because we often ate them in front of the television, the viewing of which was rationed by my father, who thought it a tremendous waste of time. They seemed to me to be a delicious alternative to my mother's monotonous meals. She did not like to cook, and I don't think she much enjoyed the business of eating. Her portions were always small, she did not like meat and she hated encountering something new and possibly strange.</p><p>I have a vivid memory of my parents and me going out to lunch in Denmark with some friends of my sister Collette's new Danish husband. The meal was long and lots of small courses were served: cold pork, salamis, liver paste, stuffed rolled beef and at least five varieties of pickled herring. Not a vegetable in sight. My mother kept refusing the various plates as they were offered. Then came a large flat dish on which were arranged what looked like two or three packets of Birds Eye fish fingers - deep-fried, golden-coloured breaded rectangles, garnished with lemon wedges and crisp lettuce leaves. She brightened and helped herself to three.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/26/gender.lifeandhealth">Continue reading...</a>GenderLife and styleFood & drinkWorld newsUK newsFeminismSpare RibThu, 26 Apr 2007 00:19:55 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/26/gender.lifeandhealthRosie Boycott2007-04-26T00:19:55ZRosie Boycott takes a trip back to the birth of the 1960s counterculturehttps://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2006/oct/08/2
It was the decade of love and peace. But without its irreverent free press, the Sixties would never have changed the world. Rosie Boycott takes a trip back to the birth of the counterculture<p>I turned 17 in the summer of 1967. That summer I smoked my first joint at a Rolling Stones Concert in Hyde Park and walked barefooted through the hot streets of west London, wearing floral bell-bottomed trousers and a coat I'd made out of a silk tablecloth that had belonged to my grandmother, which had long tassels and small daisies embroidered in purple thread.</p><p>I was still officially living at home with my parents in the heart of the Shropshire countryside and one sweltering August afternoon I had to meet my mother, who'd come to town for the day, to join her on the train journey home. I hadn't slept for what seemed like days, I'd been up at the Round House listening to Jefferson Airplane and the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. I'd been smoking a lot of dope and I'd gone home with the manager, who wore a beautiful blue velvet jacket and drove a matching coloured Saab. I'd been meeting up with some Peruvian radicals in the Troubadour Cafe to help plan a Vietnam march. To my mind, there was no contradiction between the two worlds. My head was full of thoughts of drugs, revolution, the words of Che Guevara and the psychedelic visions of Aldous Huxley. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2006/oct/08/2">Continue reading...</a>MediaLife and styleCultureArt and designSat, 07 Oct 2006 23:41:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2006/oct/08/2Rosie Boycott2006-10-07T23:41:00Z